CENSORSHIP: TORONTO SCHOOL BOARD PULLS ANOTHER ONE; ALDANA SPEAKS OUT
By Derek Weiler

Quillblog
g/index.php/2008/05/20/toronto-school-board-pulls- another-one-aldana-speaks-out/
May 20 2008
Canada

As the Toronto Star reports, the Toronto District School Board has
removed a Barbara Coloroso book from its high school curriculum.

Barbara Coloroso’s Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide
had been selected as a resource for a new Grade 11 history course
about genocide and crimes against humanity, but the book and the
course came under review after they were challenged by members of
the Canadian Turkish community.

While the board’s review committee decided to remove Coloroso’s
book from the curriculum, deeming it "far from a scrupulous text,"
the Armenian genocide will still be taught in the course.

The move comes two years after the same school board limited access
to Deborah Ellis’s Three Wishes (Groundwood Books), a book about the
Israel-Palestine conflict, to students in Grade 7 or older. There’s
been no comment or statement on the Extraordinary Evil situation
from the book’s publisher, Penguin Canada, which had not returned
messages from Q&Q at the time of this post. But Groundwood publisher
Patsy Aldana has released an open letter to the board; it appears in
full below.

Dear Trustees and staff of the TDSB,

As the publisher of Groundwood Books I am suffering from déja vu. Once
again you are succumbing to pressure and pulling a book. This is the
THREE WISHES controversy all over again.

I am also the publisher of a different book on genocide currently
listed for your course. In light of this decision I have to wonder
for how long. Our book GENOCIDE: a Groundwork Guide by Jane Springer
presents a different definition of genocide from Coloroso’s though
our book also describes the events in Armenia as genocide. As in the
case of THREE WISHES it would seem that Coloroso’s book among others
was originally selected by knowledgeable people for a reason. Now
all of a sudden it’s "inappropriate."

What is offensive in your decision is that it reflects what seems
to have become the TDSB’s habitual response to pressure – get rid
of books that are "problematic." This is a Grade 11 course – thus
obviating the weasel words "age inappropriate" used in the THREE WISHES
case. Is Barbara Coloroso’s argument unworthy of being considered,
discussed, debated? Bernard Lewis is a noted Islamophobe and yet you
seem to have included him in your course. Why not – isn’t the point
of education to stimulate critical thinking? Or have you already
decided what kids should think about this difficult topic in advance?

As a citizen of Canada, as a resident of Toronto, as a book publisher,
as a human being I find the TDSB’s reflexive instinct to censor
problematic, contentious, or (in the view of one group or another)
incorrect books and their points of view deeply disturbing. Have
you learned nothing? Our children need, urgently, to be educated to
be critical thinkers capable of drawing their own conclusions based
on a range of ideas. TDSB does not seem to embrace this principle,
quite the contrary. You are once again doing the children you have
been charged with educating a terrible injustice.

I condemn your withdrawal of this book. It is deplorable. It is
inexcusable. And I wonder what book will you be afraid to give to
our children next?

–Boundary_(ID_0tN71r4innne6FSFdoCFuA)–